Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1998, pages 106-107

Special Report

Emily Shihadeh’s “Grapes and Figs Are In Season” A Hit in U.S. and Mideast

By Nabella Salama Shunnarah

On a brightly lit set, with a backgammon table and two chairs as part of her props, a woman with salt-and-pepper hair appears on stage. In a sparkling, melodious voice, she begins to tell stories of her homeland and sing the poetry of her father. She laughs, she cries and the audience laughs and cries with her. At the end, her mesmerized audience gives her an enthusiastic standing ovation.

It’s Emily Mansur Shihadeh performing her overwhelmingly successful one-woman theater piece, “Grapes and Figs Are in Season: A Palestinian Woman’s Story,” to American, Arab, Jewish and multi-cultural audiences all over the United States and the Middle East. Her first performance was in February 1991 at the American Conservatory Playroom Theatre in San Francisco, California.

“The war in Iraq broke out when I started rehearsing my show and I didn’t know what to do,” says Ms. Shihadeh. “The word from above said: ‘go on.’ So we opened and the people came in droves. They were suffering about the war and they wanted something Arabic to come to. I filled the theater like it was never filled before.”

Since then she has given lectures and performed her show at numerous universities, schools and churches including The Divinity School at Yale University; Harvard University; Haifa Municipal Theater in Israel; Tsafta Theater in Tel Aviv; Hall of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem under the sponsorship of Sabeel, an ecumenical center for Palestinian liberation theology; and at two conventions of the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine.

Ms. Shihadeh defines herself as a catalyst for peace, understanding and justice, seeking to bridge the gap between people. “I want to tell the world about Palestine, about our wonderful culture, our grand hospitality, our wonderful qualities,” she says. “I want people to know that we are human beings—we love our families, we tell stories, we sing songs. And when they hear about my life, they are moved by the personal quality of my story, and they begin to understand.”

Using the backgammon table, Ms. Shihadeh tells about her father and mother, authoritative but loving parents, who were avid players of the popular Middle Eastern game. Her reminiscence is filled with humor and love and, as the story unfolds, the audience gets a glimpse of the customs and values of the typical Ramallah family. Yet, the shadows of political strife lengthen. With emotions high, she recreates a scene in which her family returns to Jerusalem to find their home there taken over by “the Rosens.”

“One Israeli Jewish man stood up after the show and said, ‘I could have been the Jewish soldier yelling at your mother, and I am ashamed,’” recalls Ms. Shihadeh. “Another Israeli Jewish woman in the same audience said, ‘Now I know how hard it is for Palestinians, who love freedom, to be under curfew.’ Hearing those words from them is worth my whole performance.”

Says Letty M. Russell, professor of theology at Yale University, about Ms. Shihadeh’s lecture to divinity students: “It was helpful for them [the students] to learn about the crucial importance of interreligious dialogue between Christians, Jews and Arabs as part of any movement toward peace with justice. The way she acted out the story brought out the deep family connections to the land, and to Palestinian Christian traditions, as well as her ability to use humor to stay sane in the midst of injustice and war. Her ability to express rage at injustice and yet work for peace and human dignity was amazing.”

Ms. Shihadeh’s message is the result of years of education and self-healing. After arriving in America in 1958 as a 17-year-old bride, she was lonely and very disturbed at the isolation of her life in the United States. “I grew up loving the West; I loved Americans, their culture, music, Hollywood movies, their humor,” she recalls. “But when I came to this big city of San Francisco, no one seemed to care. I saw the negative stereotypes of the Palestinians and the Arabs in the movies, television, newspapers. I told myself, one day I’m going to tell them the truth about Palestinians.”

She was raising three children and working in her husband’s grocery store when she enrolled in college classes. She received a B.A. in social welfare and a master’s degree in counseling from San Francisco State University. In addition to performing and speaking, she works in the San Francisco area as a coach, a new name for counselor. Her own spiritual journey has been a vital force which propelled Ms. Shihadeh into the limelight and gave her the courage to open her heart to her audiences and communicate her message of peace and goodwill.

“I call myself a coach for personal and spiritual growth,” says Ms. Shihadeh. “I started on a path of self-healing and self-honoring; I had to dig deep and go within myself to open up all kinds of layers of pain and joy. I’ve done work on my family relationships—on sisters, my ex-husband, children—and have been very successful. I personally apologized to my daughter in a two-page letter that said, ‘forgive me for I have unjustly hurt you.’ Now we are best friends. Since I’ve done therapy on myself, I conduct workshops called ‘Learning How to Honor Yourself’; I teach people how to respect themselves and others. We have within ourselves infinite love, infinite wisdom, infinite kindness and once we get in contact with the best part of ourselves (the Buddhists call it the true nature; we call it God, higher power), when we connect with that, we become the best of who we are.”

Her spiritual self-discovery led to her figuring out what happened in Palestine. She says, “The Jewish people avenged their holocaust on us. People all over the world have avenged their pain and rage on one another, especially on the more helpless, unorganized and gentle people. We do that in our personal lives. I took out my frustrations and pain on my children. We don’t know how to take care of our needs or how to deal with our pain, so we lash out at one another.

“Even though it affected us very personally, what happened in Palestine was not personal. It was the problem of the Jewish people and they turned around and took it out on us, their Semitic half-brothers and sisters. All this opened my mind and heart, and I brought my feelings into peace and healing. I was enlightened. I read the truth about what happened in Palestine in a wonderful book called Original Sin by Benjamin Beit Hallahmi, an Israeli professor in Haifa, who writes the truth in a most refreshing way. To me that is the essence of it: unless they acknowledge the unfairness of the way the state of Israel was created, there will never be just peace.

“The injustice goes on today, with the horror of the occupation,” says Ms. Shihadeh. “And hardly anyone in the United States knows our story or is willing to acknowledge it. They still look at us as terrorists. It is really up to us to combat, slowly and kindly, such an unfair and devastating stereotype without blame or attack. We can speak at our childrens’ schools, our churches, mosques, to friends and neighbors. Just tell them your personal story as to who you are and how the conflict affected you personally. Just saying the words, ‘my father’s house in Jerusalem is occupied by two Israeli families’ makes people’s ears perk up and want to hear more.”

Ms. Shihadeh also believes in politely but firmly correcting misinformation where she finds it. When she noted humos and falafel listed on a restaurant menu as “Israeli cuisine,” she persuaded the restaurant owner to change the menu to read, “Middle Eastern food.” She adds with a smile, “It’s the small victories that count.”

Ms. Shihadeh, who can be reached at 3440 25th St., Apt. 405, San Francisco, CA 94110, telephone (415) 282-5662, confesses that as a result of her successful one-woman show, “all of my dreams are coming true. It’s an exciting time for me.”

Asked about her future plans, she laughs and says, “I want to speak in the Knesset! I have seen the humanity of my enemy and I want to tell the truth with dignity.” She is working on a new performance titled, “Abraham Was My Grandfather,” and she’s writing her autobiography.

Turning to more mundane considerations, she adds, “I want to travel first-class in an airplane because I’m sick and tired of tiny seats going back and forth between Ramallah and San Francisco!”